


A Wizard Down

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Has Feelings About Everything, He gets better, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Prompt Fill, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 23:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17171453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: During battle, Caleb falls, if only for a moment, and it's for Caduceus to pick up the pieces.





	A Wizard Down

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Critical Prompts prompt number 4: The sword cut through Caleb, a crimson slash, and he fell to the ground. When the battle was over, when they rushed to his side, his heartbeat was already gone.

Caleb stays in the back when the fighting breaks out, knowing better than to engage the armed men directly. It is better for him to be in the back, to sling spells from afar, to analyze, to strategize. Six people in black leather had come at their group near mid-day, bold for a bandit group, and they fight like men who have had formal training with daggers and swords, not like the bandits the Nein had encountered on the road in their early days. They don’t fight like they’ve been Empire trained at least, thank the gods for small blessings, so they are probably not here for him. Probably.

“Grab the blue one!” Caleb hears one of them shout, and he hurls a firebolt at the speaker with precision honed by fear and anger. He doesn’t know if they mean Jester or Beau, but it doesn’t matter, because no one will be taken from him, from _them_ ever again, not as long as he’s alive to try and stop it. He tries to tell himself for the hundredth time that it’s because the group keeps him safe that he protects these people, but he believes it less and less each time.

Caleb is reaching into one of his pockets, feeling for the iron powder that will enlarge Beau, make her more deadly than she already is, when he hears the footfall behind him. It’s too light to be Yasha, who left with the storm a week ago, and it’s not any of his allies, his friends, he can see them all in front of him. He turns just in time to see the flash of metal as the seventh member of the ambush strikes him. There is a moment of pain, agonizing, burning, and then numbness.

 _Shock,_ Caleb thinks as he gets hit once more, as he crumples to the ground. The impact doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. He feels sick and dizzy and when he tries to breathe all he hears is a wheezing, bubbling hiss. He feels like he’s drowning, and for a moment he feels panic, and then even that becomes a far away and distant thing. He sees a pair of black leather boots move away from him, then all he sees is winter grass gone brown and dry, spattered with red like paint from Jester’s brush.

Caleb tries to get up, but his limbs feel heavy, and he is tired all of a sudden, so tired, so very cold. He struggles to keep his eyes open, knowing that when they close, they won’t open ever again. He’s dying, plain and simple, and no one saw him fall, he’s nearly certain.

Orange fur in his line of sight, rubbing against his cheek, coming away bloody. Caleb wills himself to focus and sees Frumpkin staring back at him, and the cat is making a sound that he could only describe as mournful. What will happen to his familiar if he dies? The bond will break, but will Frumpkin be stuck here, on the Material Plane, unable to go home?

 _You were the best cat,_ Caleb thinks at Frumpkin. _I didn’t deserve you. But I loved you._ It takes him three tries to snap his fingers, but in the end Frumpkin vanishes, and Caleb would breathe a sigh of relief if breathing itself wasn’t so hard.

 _I’m dying_ , Caleb thinks. He might have welcomed that once, on that night where sparks from his burning home had filled the air. He might have gone running towards his death then, if he had had the strength for it. He does not want it now. His eyes aren’t closed, he’s sure of that, but everything is growing darker, as if night was falling. In a way, he supposes it is.

“I—am—sorry—“ Caleb manages to gasp out, and he’s not sure who he’s apologizing to, his friends for leaving them or to his mother and father for failing to put things right. He wonders if his parents are waiting for him. He wonders if—

*********

“You did a very goodjob, thank you,” Caduceus says to the beetles as they swarm back into his staff, green and black bodies shining like jewels in the sun. He looks over the field, counting corpses, counting heads. There’s Nott climbing down from her perch in a nearby tree, Jester bent over a wounded Fjord, who’s insisting he’s fine. Beau is holding one of their attackers by the neck, grinning in that way she does after a good fight.

“All your buddies are dead,” Beau says, and there is triumph in her voice. “That’s what you get for going up against the Mighty Nein.”

The man returns her grin with one of his own, his teeth bloodstained. “Maybe you should count again. There’s only five of you now. Saw to that myself.”

“Nein doesn’t mean—“ Caduceus hears Beau say as he starts counting heads again. There were seven attackers, and six bodies in the grass, and only five of them standing….

Numbers have never been Caduceus’s friend, but he comes to the conclusion of that horrible equation at the same time that he hears Nott wail. He knows that sound very well, the sound of grief, and his vision tunnels and sound fades as he turns.

Red hair, red blood on brown grass, too much red for there to still be life, but he lifts a hand as he walks anyway, says a word that keeps those that are on death’s door from going though, and is not surprised when the magic doesn’t take. Caduceus knows a corpse when he sees one. He’s seen so many.

Other voices, other sounds. There’s a rhythmic thudding in Caduceus’s ears which he thinks is the sound of his own heartbeat before realizing it’s the sound of fists in flesh, the sound of Beau punching her captive over and over again. Fjord is muttering something, distant and dim. Jester is closer, louder.

“No no no!” It’s a frantic, breathless plea as she runs to the body, and drops gracelessly to her knees beside it as she frantically works to undo a pouch on her belt. “How long has it been, the magic won’t work if— no no no—“

 _No_ , Caduceus echoes in his head as he walks quickly and calmly towards Jester and Nott and the body. No, not the body, Caleb, it’s Caleb, Caleb Widogast who loves books and his cat and has the bearing of a man who believes he deserves every hurt the world hits him with, and who gave Caduceus a necklace that had the power to prevent this. He sees Jester finally pull the diamond from her pouch, one of the diamonds they had bought together on a sunny day in Zadash, so far away from this cold and empty field at the edge of the Empire, and her hands are shaking so badly that she almost drops the gem. Caduceus kneels and reaches down, steadying her hands with his own, and together they lay the diamond on Caleb’s chest, blood smearing across the facets.

Death is a natural part of life. Caduceus understands that fact, knows it deep down in the bones and blood and breath of him. Death is natural. But this? Caleb lying with his head cradled in Nott’s hands as she wails? His skin already going ashen, his eyes open and unseeing? That’s just _wrong_ in a way he doesn’t have words for.

Jester is praying out loud, words and magic tangling together in a rush, and the air smells of sugar and the dust of long roads.Caduceus’s prayer is a whisper in his head, his magic the smell of freshly steeped tea leaves and decay.

 _Please_ , he prays. _He is meant for greater than this. Please._

There is a moment when he thinks they are too late, and his mind has already moved on to where would be best to dig the grave and wondering what would grow from the blood and bones of this man, his friend of so short a time, when Caleb gasps, a soft sound that might as well be a thunderclap.

“Thank you,” Caduceus whispers as he pours magic into Caleb, watches the color return to his face, the wounds in his chest and side closing. There are scars, but that is all right. That is more than all right. For a moment Caduceus feels a warm breeze caress his cheek, carrying the smell of flowers with it.

“He’s going to be okay,” Caduceus says, even though Caleb hasn’t opened his eyes yet, and may not for some time. He assumes dying takes a lot out of the person doing it, and healing spells won’t put the blood on the grass back where it belongs. “Let’s get him somewhere more comfortable.”

Jester is the one who picks Caleb up as easily as if he weighs nothing at all. She’s still crying, but she’s laughing too, relief and joy all mixed together in the sound. “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you,” she says, and Caduceus realizes after a moment that she’s looking up at him, thanking _him_ , and he puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank _you_ ,” he says quietly, as if it would wake the unconscious man in Jester’s arms. “We’ll have to buy you another diamond when we get back to Zadash.”

“I’m going to buy so many,” Jester says fervently as she walks towards the cart. “So many.”

Caduceus feels a tug on his pant leg and sees Nott staring up at him, her yellow eyes glistening. He hunkers down, still tall enough that she has to look up and he has to bow his head to speak to her. “I’m sorry,” Caduceus says before letting her speak, sure he knows what is coming. “I said I’d take care of your boy, but I didn’t see him until it was almost too late.”

Nott shakes her head. “I didn’t have my eye on him either. But you took care of him when it mattered, Mister Clay. You and Jester. I won’t forget that.”

Caduceus watches Nott scurry after Jester before standing once more, making his way towards Beau, only giving the briefest of pauses beside each corpse, staying only long enough to imbue their flesh with enough magic so their bodies can start becoming useful. He has his duties to the dying and the dead, but it’s the living he needs to take care of now.

Beau’s back is to Caduceus, her shoulders heaving with her heavy breathing, one blood covered fist raised for another blow. The man in her grip is barely conscious, his face a bloody mess, blood pouring from his extremely broken nose. His eyes meet Caduceus’s and where he had looked smug minutes before he now looks terrified.

“Please help me!” The man’s voice sounds thick, and he spits blood when he speaks. “I think she’s going to kill me!”

Caduceus hums noncommittally. “Is that true, Beau? Are you going to kill this man?” He doesn’t think she will, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

“That depends.” Beau sounds like she’s talking through clenched teeth. “I heard Nott screaming. It was Caleb, wasn’t it? It was Caleb that this piece of shit—“ Beau breaks off and shakes him hard and the man grunts in pain.

“It was Caleb. He’s alive now, Beau. He’s going to be all right.”

Beau lowers her raised fist and Caduceus hears the slight pained inhale of breath and sees how the muscles in her arm tense for just a moment. “Well how about that,” she hisses at the man. “Looks like you get to live. Go back and tell—“ A pause, brief as a blink, the considering of a secret she doesn’t want shared. “Go and tell your employer not to try this shit again.” She drops him then and turns, almost walking straight into Caduceus, who steps out of her way and glances briefly at the man on the ground to make sure he’s in no shape to try anything before following her.

“I’m fine,” Beau says as she walks, not turning around. Caduceus can see her right fist better now, the wrapping around it stained and torn, her fingers swollen purple underneath, possibly broken.

“Beau.” He doesn’t put a hand on her shoulder, because wounded animals and wounded people both tend to lash out when they’re hurt, but she spins around anyway. There is blood on her face, and that makes the tears easier to see.

“I said I’m _fine_.” The words are a hiss, a warning, and he lets her go, but not without a word that carries magic with it. He watches her step falter as the magic heals her, as she flexes her hand, but she doesn’t say anything as she helps Jester get Caleb into the cart.

Caduceus sighs and walks to the front of the cart, giving the horses a friendly pat. “Sorry about all that commotion. We’re going to get going now, nothing too fast if you don’t mind. One of us was—“ _blue eyes staring up at the sky, already clouding over “—_ hurt pretty badly back there.”

Caduceus isn’t surprised to find Fjord at the front of the cart as Caduceus takes both a seat and the reins. He’s worrying at a tusk with one thumb, and his skin has gone the greenish-yellow of a plant in need of water.

“Is he going to be all right?”

Caduceus nods as the horses start moving again, and gives Fjord his most reassuring smile. “It might take him awhile to wake up, but yes, he’s going to be just fine.”

“Good. That’s good.” Some of the color returns to Fjord’s face as he stares straight ahead. “There’s a town about five miles down the road, we can stop, get him room with a proper bed and such.”

“That’d be nice, and not just for him. Everyone needs a meal and a good night’s rest after all that.”

Fjord hums in a distracted way, and Caduceus takes an eye from the road to spare him a glance. There’s a hunch to the man’s shoulders, as if he’s laboring under an unbearable weight.

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

“It’s spooky when you do that sometimes,” Fjord mumbles, but he doesn’t straighten up. “I should have been keeping an eye on him. Molly was always better about that than I was, making sure Caleb was safe while he was working his spells. Sometimes I—I almost forget he’s not here to do that, even though it’s been months since…”

Fjord trails off, and Caduceus lets him have his silence for a little while, gives him space to experience that grief again before he speaks.

“Nott blames herself as well, and so does Beau, and so do I, but sometimes these kinds of things just happen. All we can do is learn from today so we can be better prepared tomorrow, and take care of ourselves and each other in the meantime.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Fjord doesn’t sound convinced, but there’s only so much Caduceus can do about that. “Are _you_ okay?”

“I’m fine,” Caduceus says, and it’s not a lie. He’s fine, because he has to be fine in the face of hurt and grief. That’s his job. Later, alone, maybe he won’t be fine, but right now he has other things to worry about. He needs to get everyone where they’re going, and get Caleb settled and make sure everyone gets some proper food and rest. In all things he’s a caretaker. He takes care.

***********

_Blood in the grass, so much blood, coppery and thick and—_

“Caduceus?”

Caduceus blinks and Jester’s face comes into focus. “Sorry, got lost in thought for a moment there.”

“I was just asking if you’re okay. You’ve hardly touched your food.”

“Oh. Oh right.” He had been so focused on making sure everyone else had been eating, then he had got caught up in his own thoughts. Nott is upstairs watching Caleb, and she promised to message him if there was any change. He turns his attention to his food, to give it the proper respect it deserves, and finds that it’s not an easy task. He’s exhausted, frankly, all the way down to his bones. There are still things to be done though, still people in need of care.

Caduceus sees Beau watching him out of the corner of his eye, and isn’t surprised when she offers to help carry food upstairs for Caleb and Nott. It’s only when they’ve ascended the stairs and are in the relative quiet of the hallway that she speaks.

“Thank you. For healing my hand. Even though I was being kind of an asshole.” Beau says the words like she’s embarrassed that she needed his help in the first place.

“You’re welcome.”

“This is all my fault you know.”

“I’d say it’s the fault of whoever sent those men after you, personally.”

“Yeah, but…” She grimaces, clenching her jaw and squaring her shoulders as if readying herself for another fight. “Think anyone would mind if we took a trip over to Kamordah? Someone I need to talk to, face to face.”

Caduceus has a pretty good idea of who she needs to talk to. Families are messy, even the best of them. “I don’t think anyone would mind at all.”

Nott answers the door quickly when they knock, asking a question before Caduceus even has a chance to step inside. “Why hasn’t he woken up yet? Is he supposed to be awake by now? Usually when you heal people it’s like—“ She snaps her fingers.

“He died today,” Caduceus says calmly. “It’s probably very tiring.” He sets down the bowl of soup he had been carrying onto the nightstand and looks Caleb over. “His color is good, and his breathing sounds fine.” He places two fingers on the pulse of Caleb’s throat. It beats steadily, if not as strongly as he’d like. “He’s fine, Nott. He just needs quiet, and rest.”

Beau catches his eye, and something about the way Beau looks at him makes him wonder if there had been something in his tone that he hadn’t intended.

“Hey Nott, how about we leave Caduceus up here to look after Caleb, and you come downstairs with me? I think I know who sent those guys after us today, and we need to come up with a plan.”

“You mean it wasn’t just bandits?” Nott is already halfway out the door after Beau, who looks over her head and gives Caduceus a nod before shutting the door.

Caduceus pulls up a chair and sinks into it, though the chair is hard wood and no good for relaxing in. If Caleb doesn’t wake in a few more hours, Caduceus might have to coax him awake just long enough to get some food into him. Until then, all he can do is wait.

He finds himself fiddling with the pendant around his neck, thumb worrying over the stone as if it were as common as a river rock, as if it didn’t contain magic that could help stave off death. He’s so tired. Is that why his hands are shaking? Is that why he can’t stop thinking about Caleb laying there in the grass, his heart’s blood pooling around him? He’s seen the effects of violent death before, but it hadn’t been _personal_. Would he feel this way if it had been Jester laying there? Nott? Beau? Fjord? Yasha?

It takes him a few tries to undo the clasp of the periapt.

“Maybe I should give this back to you, Mister Caleb.”

************

Caleb remembers everything that happens to him when he is awake. Dreaming is different, and so, he presumes, is dying. He drifts in the warm black waters of unconsciousness just on the edge of awareness, and tries to recall what happened to him. He remembers the sword. He remembers falling, and the blue sky, and then the dark. He doesn’t know if the memory of his mother’s hand on his forehead, his father whispering that he was forgiven are real things that happened after, or just dreams. He thinks he remembers a man with raven wings who had smiled sadly at him. He thinks he remembers….

_You gave him my heart, Caleb. Don’t let him give it back._

Caleb opens his eyes and looks past the heart on its silver chain to the firbolg holding it. He remembers the smell of magic, wherever he had been, someone with a green cloak, another person with flowers growing from her hair. It had been Jester who brought him back, he thinks, and it was Caduceus who had healed him, who was here now, looking worn down and worn out.

It takes effort to lift his hand, to reach up and cup one fuzzy cheek, but he manages it somehow.

“I gave that to you, Caduceus. It is yours. It is for you.”

As Caduceus looks at him, eyes damp, ears twitching, Caleb thinks that maybe it’s not just the necklace he is talking about, and that is a thought to examine another time, or to hide away and never look at again, he is unsure of which. Right now all that matters is that Caduceus smiles back, and refastens the necklace around his own neck, and everything feels all right again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm angel-ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Oh, My Child](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187497) by [StupidPoetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StupidPoetry/pseuds/StupidPoetry)




End file.
